Whole sardines

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Sorry if this is a repeat question...I tried the search engine and all I can say is, blah!

So I found whole, frozen sardines yesterday at an Asian market for $1.59/lb. This is a decent price, right? I know it's much cheaper than what I pay for canned sardines! (Although I will keep those on hand for mixing with his rabbit head grind, which Duke isn't a fan of plain.)

Anything I need to know about feeding raw sardines? I tried one yesterday and Duke looked puzzled at first, but he eventually ate the whole thing. I looked where they came from before buying and they're a product of the USA (not China). Are there worries with raw sardines like there are with salmon and other whole fish?

This is really cheap fare for us--can these be fed as several meals a week? Do I still need to supplement with Grizzly Oil if he is getting regular sardines?

http://takamas.tripod.com/nutritio.htm
Looks like sardines might have about 2500 combined EPA/DHA per 3.5 ounces or 100 grams. I dose the minimum of 300 combined EPA/DHA per 30 pounds of dog so if Max weighed 30 pounds I would want to feed him at least 300x7=2100 mg of EPA/DHA a week, right? So for my mythical 30 pound Max 3.5 ounces of sardines would be fine, that would be 2-3 sardines I think. That isn't much, less than half a day's ration a week. You can feed up to triple this amount if you like. Don't try mostly sardine meals all at once or he may balk at eating them. Just count out how many he gets a week and put one or two in for a while, then 2 or 3 and so on.

Mercury, thiaminase, scromboid poisoning, general toxic buildup and salmon poisoning are the issues with fish I know about at the moment. *Sardines are small fast growing fish so no worries with mercury. They do contain thiaminase which deactivates thiamine, I just feed away from pork in case there is a problem. I think it is only if most of the diet is sardine there could be a problem. *Don't think scromboid poisoning is a problem with sardines, it is caused by release of a histamine type substance when the fish starts decomposing and looks like an allergic reaction. *Fish need to be human quality, I would be careful if choosing bait fish for instance, not an issue here. *Sardines aren't in the salmon family and don't go upstream so don't get in contact with the parasite that causes salmon poisoning. Done.

A whole sardine is perfect the way it is. Just consider the bone content of the rest of the meal. I used whole sardines as a small bone crutch a couple years ago when I was reducing Max's bone intake by feeding bigger bony meals alternating with tiny to zero bone meals. My problem, not his. I do like seeing him enjoy a nice chomp on bone.

Great! Crash loves his fishcicles! He will only eat Fish Frozen. I guess he does not care for the texture of it thawed out. We buy those frozen Sardines frequently in the summer and before I got 150pounds of Alaska Salmon. We gave him one as a treat/snack when ever we went downstairs to the freezer. Great price too! Our's are $2 a pound.

The ones I buy are the 'large', wild caught, Sardines an I pay 2.99 a pound. Since they are a fish that is low man on the totem pole they should be pretty free of any toxins. I count the ones I feed as Whole Prey, and the organs and bone go towards her weekly bone/organ allotments.

Max, my math sucks. Can you help a sista out? Reyna weighs 170lbs and Bam is 200 (okay was 199lbs on Friday). How many sardines would they get, say weekly? I never figured that out last time after I asked... When I read you doing math, my mind seems to magically turn it into the words from the teach on Charlie Brown. I just don't "get it."

Looks like 10 mg per pound is about it if it is 300 mg per 30 pounds so Reyna would need 1700 mg a day x7=11900 mg a week. Divide that number by 2500 [amount in 100 grams of sardines] then she needs 4.76x100 grams=476 grams. 476/28=about 17 ounces a week. Bam Bam would need 2000 mg a dayx7=14000. Divide that by 7 and convert to grams from 100 grams and he needs 560 grams a week. 560/28 grams per ounce and he needs about 20 ounces a week.

Remember this is the minimum suggested amount, you can feed up to 3 times this PLUS this is the amount one website is posting for omega 3 in sardines AND there are lots of sardine species.

So guess 1/2 a meal a week is a fairly minimal amount and a whole meal is about 2x that amount.